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A REPORT published recently in this paper shed light on the relief efforts undertaken by religious groups in areas affected by the ongoing military operation.
As has been the case in previous humanitarian crises, such as the 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir and KP, the 2009 Swat operation and the 2010 floods, religious organisations have been amongst the first civil society actors to establish fund-raising campaigns in metropolitan centres, and a ground presence in the affected areas.
This time around, their presence has gained even greater importance because of the army’s refusal to allow foreign donors and their local counterparts to work in and around North Waziristan.
Reports on the duplicitous nature of religious charities have been doing the rounds in Pakistan for at least the last decade. It is an established fact that many of these organisations, while often engaging in important humanitarian work, function as benign fronts for militant recruitment and jihad funding. This year, the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) is seeking Ramazan-inspired alms for both, local IDPs from North Waziristan and the ‘righteous jihad in Syria’. While the security implications of their work remain a major analytical concern, a deeper diagnosis of the skew induced within Pakistan’s civil society landscape remains missing.
Reports on the duplicitous nature of religious charities have been doing the rounds.
A key factor distinguishing religious charities from what is conventionally (and exclusively) called Pakistani civil society ie ‘secular’ NGOs and advocacy groups, is their ability to mobilise local resources, such as zakat and chanda, and informal sources of international funding, such as donations from expatriate businessmen and professionals.
By many rough estimates, and rough estimates are all we have, Pakistani citizens spend around $6 billion on charitable activities in various forms. A considerable portion of this amount is spent through large, national-level Islamist actors like the Jamaatud Dawa, and through unregistered charities associated with religious institutions (mosques and seminaries), and bazaar-based trader groups (an Islamic version of corporate social responsibility).
In local outreach, first-response abilities, and even in tasks central to civil society work — such as the donor-favoured ‘community mobilisation’ and ‘civic participation’— Islamic welfare groups exhibit far greater capacity than their bureaucratised NGO counterparts.
Moreover, carefully selected religious rhetoric garners all aspects of the charitable work. Popular appeals include examples from the lives of the Prophet (PBUH) and his companions, and the reminder of the fundamental perch that zakat and alms-giving occupies within Islamic theology. Through such invocations, the notion of an ‘ideal, public-minded, and religiously inspired’ citizen is first created and then repeatedly reinforced.
Establishing a grass-roots presence through volunteer networks, and developing social institutions which provide basic services and engender a shared sense of community, are time-tested strategies of groups of all ideological bents. It allows them to retain presence and popularity regardless of any actual control over formal political power, and helps in influencing discourse, political attitudes and public morality at the neighbourhood and household level.
This has been the case in numerous countries, most notably India (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), Egypt (Ikhwan), Turkey (the Justice and Development Party), and Lebanon (Hezbollah), where religious (or religion-inspired) groups have invested considerable time and money in the shape of sophisticated community structures — often voluntary in nature — to counter and ultimately defeat the popularity of progressive/secular alternatives.
Within the right-wing in Pakistan, and in the four countries mentioned here, the idea of welfare and charity remains central to the development of a new kind of citizen and a new and just society. Without the material aspect of helping out those in need, the ideological posturing remains fairly empty, and rarely gains traction.
What makes Pakistan’s case somewhat unique and perhaps more troubling, when compared to examples of religious groups from other parts of the world, is the lack of equally potent alternatives. Given the unsustainable, and foreign aid-reliant nature of most progressive NGOs and advocacy groups (barring notable exceptions like Shaukat Khanum and Edhi), there is literally little check on or indigenous response to the burgeoning presence and influence of right-wing groups.
The troubling aspects of this open-field situation are already apparent. Mobilisation on religious causes (blasphemy/sectarian hatred) is much more potent now precisely because of the years of effort put in by the welfare wings of Islamist groups. The successful utilisation of public spaces, like the mosque and bazaar as hubs of dispensing charity (over and above their existing roles as platforms to meet, greet and preach), is part of this same phenomenon.
This is especially visible during Ramazan, when one can often see welfare organisations distributing free iftar amongst the urban poor, and channelling zakat for a range of activities such as the provision of basic medicine and grants for orphan marriages.
Given the scale of work and its deep roots within society, the latest example of religious groups responding to a humanitarian crisis needs to be analysed beyond the political economy of militancy and jihad. A deeper appreciation of the problem would ideally incorporate an understanding of how welfare work combines with ideological messaging on a day-to-day basis to produce a canvas splattered with violence and exclusion.
More importantly, progressive civil society actors, many of whom have taken strong positions against ideological extremism and religious violence, would have to understand and acknowledge the limitations of advocacy and welfare work that’s so heavily bureaucratised and tied to foreign aid. This will be a small, but a sure first step towards rectifying the existing skew.
The writer is a freelance columnist.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2014
